October 31, 2011

Crazy

So it has been awhile since I have had time to post to the blog.  Mostly because life has been exceedingly crazy.  Steve and I were on vacation the second week of October.  We went to Gatlinburg, TN and had a wonderful time.  Future blog post to come!! 

Also, a few days after returning home, Steve left to go back out of town for work and I came home from work to find we had suddenly acquired an indoor water feature.  A line in our bathroom broke and was spewing water throughout the house.  So again - future post and pictures to come about all of that funness.

And finally, I have been delayed in posting because I have fallen into a bit of a depression.  I have so many thoughts and feelings and emotions going on right now and I am having a hard time sorting them all out.  I think a lot of it is because of all of the stuff with the house and we have decided to postpone our IVF in November for a variety of reasons (and you guessed it - future blog post to come .. lol). I am just feeling super overwhelmed and confused and just when I thought I had dealt with the miscarriage, I find myself going back there again.  Maybe I never really dealt with it because I was able to look forward to doing the IVF again so soon that I could avoid how I was feeling about the miscarriage.

With all of that being said, I have decided that it's time to maybe seek out some professional help.  In some ways I feel weak for needing to talk to someone, but at the same time I realize that I can only self-diagnose myself so much.  I think it will be good to have someone impartial to help me sort out of my feelings about everything going on around me.  And I figure, it can't hurt.  The worse that can happen is I decide I don't like it and that therapy isn't for me .. or really maybe the worst that can happen is that she says I really am crazy. :)

October 6, 2011

When I grow up ...

When you were a small child, what was your answer when someone asked you "what do you want to be when you grow up"? For my seven year old nephew the answer is that he wants to be a builder or a policeman or an army guy.  Right now he wants to be a Jedi (he's such a cool kid!).  When I was little, my initial answer was singer, dancer, and movie star. But eventually my answers changed. And good thing. I have zero talent for singing, dancing or acting.  In fact, I am as far from those three things as possible. 

As I was saying, eventually my answer changed.  I told anyone who would listen that someday I was going to be a doctor and deliver babies.  I was absolutely positive that this is what I was going to be when I grew up.  Until I realized exactly what that entailed (of course I didn't realize this till I was about 12, but still - it was a rather rude awakening).  Then I wanted to be a pediatrician.  But I worried about having patients die and that sort of turned me away form that career path.  I knew I wanted to do something in the medical field, I just didn't know what.  I was super excited when I got chosen to be in a medical program my senior year in high school that allowed me to shadow local doctors and get a taste of the possible career choices.  Unfortunately, I never really found anything I loved.

So instead I've spent my years in college pursuing a management degree and then business because I really don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I was never the one in school who had a plan all mapped out for my future. I envy the young men and women who attend school at the automotive college I work at because they know what they want to be and they have such a passion for what they are doing.  I wish I felt the same way about something, anything.  I envy most people who are so sure about what it is that they want to do.

Just recently I had an epiphany.  Why does "what do you want to be when you grow up" have to be about a career choice?  Why can't it be something else? Why can't "i want to be a wife" or "i want to be a mother" be an acceptable answer to the question? Looking back, I realize that what I was meant to be started early. I just missed it, or it was so much a part of me, that I couldn't see what it was. 


I loved my barbie dolls growing up.  But what I loved more than them were the Quint Dolls I received for Christmas one year.  From then on, every play scenario involved Barbie and Ken with their 5 babies.  I spent hours playing with my dolls. Pictures below are of the Quints house and the Quints by Tyco dolls.


After the barbies it was books.  At that point my focused shifted slightly to anything and everything to do with twins.  I would read anything and watch anything that had to do with twins.  I was obsessed.  My favorite books were the Sweet Valley series about twin sisters Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield.  My junior year in high school I had to take a Research class.  During the class we had to write 2 research papers.  I knew I wanted to write something about twins, but it was difficult to find information that would make a compelling and informative research paper.  So instead I wrote my first paper about Multiple Personality Disorder.  For the second research paper I again wanted to do something dealing with twins, but knowing it wasn't content enough, I started to research the idea of multiple births.  This research led me to how multiple births occur. And the basis of my research paper was born. 

I know .. I was a weird kid in high school.  But I was fascinated.  I never knew the complexity of having a baby.  I mean, you hear so many stories when you are a teenager about girls getting pregnant the first time they had sex - now I realize that while that is certainly true and does happen, those type of stories are more often told to young, hormonal teenagers to help scare them into either abstinence or practicing safe sex (seriously - I am not knocking this approach at all). You just assume that having a baby is easy and when you are ready, it will happen just like that. Too bad I know better than that now.

But I digress.  One day, recently, I woke up and realized that more than anything in this entire world I wanted to be a mom.  The one thing I have always been interested in and passionate about was babies.  I feel like I should have realized this much sooner.  Especially after one of my friends once said "I have never met anyone like you; who looks at having a baby the way you do".  At first I thought she saw me this way because we have been through so much to have a baby and we are still going to have to go through so much more to get there so my perspective on having a baby would be different from other people, without our infertility issues, who want a baby.  But really, I think it's because my desire to be a mom far outweighs a lot of other things in my life. I just hope that desire becomes fulfilled instead of a plan that is fraught with disappointment.

So .. final conclusion, I sit here proudly and proclaim:  When I grow up I want to be ... a mom!

October 5, 2011

IVF Round 2.0

It's official, we will be doing the In Vitro again.  I started birth control pills this past Sunday. Egg retrieval is scheduled for the week of Thanksgiving.  This means in early November I will start the stimulation medication.

We are excited and nervous to be doing this again.  I cannot decide if I am more nervous about the idea that we will get pregnant again and then miscarry, or that this time it will not work at all.  A part of me is almost too afraid to try again, but I don't want my fear to cripple me.  I just keep telling myself that if it's meant to be, it will happen.  At first it was the financial aspect I was worried about, but thanks to the doctor agreeing to waive about $1500 in charges and then our IVF coordinator securing the majority of our needed meds from their stock of samples, we can afford to try again this year. 

Now the only thing I am worried about is getting the time off of work.  I worry that if the IVF works and we get pregnant again, that I will be a basket case.  I know that I will worry about miscarrying again. I fear that stress played a major role in our first miscarriage and I worry that the stress from my job will cause a second miscarriage.  I am currently working with my employer to determine which options are available to me for a leave of absence.  I may have to end up taking a 30 day unpaid leave, but at this point I am willing to do whatever it takes to make my dreams of having a family come true.

Wish us luck and I will keep you posted as we get further into this journey in the coming weeks.